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Topic: Follow the Money (Bayer Crop Did NOT Fund the CCD New York Times Artical) (Read 2619 times)

Added: Guhh, just so everyone knows I'm changing the title to this thread. Apparently I was suckered into believing an article written by people who hate Bayer, found a link between the author of the new study and the corporation for an unrelated project. Sorry. This doesn't change my confusion I have with the chart for one of their studies though. However, they are onto something, despite the fact that it's not pesticide.

So earlier this week everyone was fooled into believing we've found the cause of CCD thanks to this article.

However when you go to the study itself you'll find a chart at the bottom.

What's really alarming is how 40% of their control just died off in 14 days. These were collections of young bees 3 days old or less and 40% of the ones not given the virus or fungi just up and died! Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't adult worker bees supposed to live between 30 and 60 days. Their control should have had something above 90%. Hell they're not even flying out of the hive until day 12, though I don't know what conditions they were kept in how they were fed.

Another thing the chart points out is how devastating the virus and fungi are when they're alone. When they're together they kill the bees 10% faster over a 14 day period. We're expected to believe a hive could just bounce back after losing more than 60% of their work force in 14 days? This chart should have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virus and the fungi alone simply can't kill the bees on their own. If anything shows multiple causes of CCD. Clearly what's killing them has already happened and has contaminated their control. The virus and fungi are vultures picking off the weak ones.

The Times reporter who authored the recent article, Kirk Johnson, responded in an e-mail that Dr. Bromenshenk "did not volunteer his funding sources." Johnson's e-mail notes that he found the peer-reviewed scientific paper cautious and that he "tried to convey that caution in my story." Adds Johnson: The study "doesn't say pesticides aren't a cause of the underlying vulnerability that the virus-fungus combo then exploits...."

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Underlying cause of bee deaths still unclear

Dr. Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the health group at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says that while the Bromenshenk/Army study is interesting, it fails to ask the underlying question "Why are colonies dying? Is it because they're getting weak? People who have HIV don't die of HIV. They die of other diseases they get because their immune systems are knocked off, making them more susceptible." In other words, pesticides could weaken the bees -- and then the virus/fungus combination finishes them off. That notion, however, is not explored in the new study.

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The EPA has based its approval of neonicotinoids on the fact that the amounts found in pollen and nectar were low enough to not be lethal to the bees -- the only metric they have to measure whether to approve a pesticide or not. But studies have shown that at low doses, the neonicotinoids have sublethal effects that impair bees' learning and memory. The USDA's chief researcher, Jeff Pettis, told me in 2008 that pesticides were definitely "on the list" as a primary stressor that could make bees more vulnerable to other factors, like pests and bacteria.

Another thing the chart points out is how devastating the virus and fungi are when they're alone. When they're together they kill the bees 10% faster over a 14 day period. We're expected to believe a hive could just bounce back after losing more than 60% of their work force in 14 days?

the chart is survivability--not mortality-the 60% where survivors- :) RDY-B

This is just one study. It is an interesting one, and seems to be well done and carefully written. But every researcher has a bias, no matter how hard he/she tries not to. That is why there needs to be a body of evidence, eg many studies. This study is interesting, perhaps enough to get other researchers to delve more closely, perhaps not.

Guhh, just so everyone knows I'm changing the title to this thread. Apparently I was suckered into believing an article written by people who hate Bayer, found a link between the author of the new study and the corporation for an unrelated project. Sorry.

This doesn't change my confusion with the chart for one of their experiments though. They should have had a higher survival rate in their control, and the virus and fungi separately should have also been higher as well. However, I will admit they are onto something. For the longest time I was a firm believer that CCD was a pesticide issue, but someone finally brought to my attention a study that shows genes commonly associated with pesticide reactions are not consistently active for CCD colonies. http://www.pnas.org/content/106/35/14790.full

cant expect caged bees to act like colonies-and they did not intend to -they needed to show a representation of cause and efect-and they did it this way because it can be duplicated-there is so much environmental influence that effects a colony of bees that it may not qualify as a CONTROL-and thats a problem when they try to duplicate the test-over and over many times -this was for per review(of scientific caliber) and had to stand up to scrutiny of such-more to be revealed- :lol: RDY-B

mr I love ants writes:This doesn't change my confusion with the chart for one of their experiments though. They should have had a higher survival rate in their control, and the virus and fungi separately should have also been higher as well.

tecumseh:you would want to compare the control to other 'cage type' mortality test. just casually the number in the control looks about right to me. casually about 45 days is the longest a worker bee will survive in these kinds of test.

mathmatically survival rate should be = 1 - mortality rate. one is the opposite of the other.

I have absolutely no idea what might make you think the virus and fungi treatment should have led to a 'higher survival rate'. I don't know much about the mechanism of the virus but the fungi (nosema) operates with about a 2 week onset window so individual bee mortality should come about suddenly creating a sharp bend in the cumulative data.

Researchers on many levels have long (way before CDD) been called "grant bleep" for a reason. Entomology departments, university offices, and about anyone else in research lives off of grant funding and donations.

This is only about the twentieth "discovery" to be announced suggesting someone found the cause of CCD. It's a "Get your name on the research paper first" contest. So in the end, if we do have an exact cause found, someone will be able to claim they stated it first. Funny thing is nobody EVER remembers the other hundred papers or so that got the call wrong.

So relax, this will continue for the foreseeable future. Way too many research and bee labs being funded over this. And NOBODY will kill that goose until the last golden egg is laid and the last research dollar has been squeezed.

What papers like this does, in undermine the real problem in the bee industry. People read these stories and assume that the problem is solved. And support erodes away. That is about as bad as the "Lets all run down the street every year and claim that we will all die within four years without the bees" or "We will not have enough bees this year"...which has been going in now for 4-5 years. And so the public support will decrease by thinking we found the answer, or will sicken from the "Little boy who cried wolf" syndrome.

In the end, it all comes down to money. And I stated on the record three years ago when the first claim to finding the reason for CCD was made. That this will play out for years. Way to much money. Way to much to be gained. You think the universities and government agencies are any different than the white house message..."Never.....never, let a catastrophe occur without taking full advantage of the situation".

CCD is caused by many things happening off each other. The number of possibilities that added to the total number of straws that broke the camels back makes this a research goldmine. They will find one thing, then need to find all the factors that may be contributing, and the picture just keeps branching out endlessly into the future.

(1) the onion seed pollination work was done for a large U.S. company, there was no grant received from Bayer,

(2) the acoustic recorder is better at pesticide detection than pathogens - the latter part of the development is an ongoing research project still being funded by USDA.

(3) we weren't asked by NYT to disclose our funding sources, it wasn't brought up, and there was no need since this information is required by PloS ONE before they will even review a paper. You can find it on the PloS ONE site.

(4) Bee Alert Technology, Inc. is a technology transfer company that is legally recognized as an independent company in the State of Montana, affiliated with the University of Montana. It is MT State Board of Regents Approved and has been since the early 2000s. Intellectual property agreements are in place, stipulating issues such as patents, IP rights, licensing, and if we ever make any money - which seems a LONG way off, the University receives an established royalty for research and education.

The Fortune article presents an assortment of lies and half-truths by a reporter who left another magazine before it folded. Unfortunately, this article has spawned a copy by New Yorker Magazine that added an even more inflammatory headline and chose to emphasize some of Ms Eban's more outrageous claims of what she alleges I said.

The only good thing about all this is that it can still generate a smile, courtesy of friends - such as the proposed title sent to me “Fortune’s Misfortune – Smearing Scientists Is Liable To Be Libel “.

As mentioned above authors clearly state it isn't the last word on CCD or even terribly conclusive. The press made those claims, nothing new.

One bone I would pick with the study is that bees selected because they showed "signs of CCD" is tenuous. Even if there is a consensus on what the symptoms are.

Tough to study bees that suddenly disappear obviously, but to be convinced that bees actually had CCD I would like to see a study with some followup in the field to determine which colonies actually collapsed? No studies have done this yet as far as I know.

There is a LONG way to go. Diseased or poisoned bees don't normally disappear, they're either carried a short distance and dumped or they pile up at the entrance. The media flopped on this one.